ONE of the world's most famous architects is to design a cancer centre in Wales.

ONE of the world's most famous architects is to design a cancer centre in Wales.

Swansea's Singleton Hospital is to get a landmark cancer information centre designed by Frank Gehry, who dreamed up the distinctive Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Swansea's NHS Trust board has given the go-ahead for Wales's first Maggie's Centre.

Maggie's Centres are in operation at Dundee and Edinburgh and 10 more are planned for UK hospitals over the next few years.

They are the legacy of architect Maggie Keswick Jencks, a close personal friend of Gehry. She died in 1995 after fighting breast cancer for many years and decided that fear and ignorance of cancer needed to be counteracted.

Ms Keswick Jencks believed the hammer blow of cancer diagnosis was made worse by lack of information and support. She established a well-funded charity to build a string of centres specifically designed to make fighting cancer more bearable.

She died a year before the first Maggie's Centre opened in Scotland.

The Swansea centre is designed to be a unique building sited close to the South West Wales Cancer Institute whose director Professor Robert Leonard, a leading oncologist, was one of the doctors who treated Ms Keswick Jencks.

The centres in Edinburgh and Dundee have the Frank Gehry signature features of flowing lines and widespread use of glass and new materials. He waived his design fees for the buildings.

His company is also a front-runner to design the replacement for the Swansea Leisure Centre.

The Maggie's Centre in Swansea will offer:

Anxiety reduction and stress management for those diagnosed with cancer through trained relaxation therapists who offer one-to-one and group sessions.

Psychological support via a trained full-time psychologist offering one-to-one sessions as well as setting up groups for those caring for cancer patients.

Information through a library of books, literature, tapes, videos and the internet backed up by trained staff.

The Maggie's Centre charity has offered to give between £800,000and £900,000 towards the cost of the building, with £100,000 on offer from Health Commission Wales.

The charity will appoint professional fund-raisers to help meet the expected £115,000 a year running costs of the centre.

While the centre was generally welcomed by the Swansea NHS board there was concern about the future of existing cancer information services in Swansea.

Board members were also worried about any possible effect on fund raising for the T Olwen hospice, used extensively by cancer patients, which is based at Swansea's Morriston Hospital.

Board member Rob Davies said, "T Olwen is a very emotional name in Swansea."

However the trust's director of modernisation, Andrew Bellamy, said the long-term aim was to move T Olwen to Singleton Hospital.

He said in the meantime it would continue at Morriston until funds could be found for the transfer.

In a report on the development of the Maggie's Centre, Mr Bellamy agreed there was concern over potential duplication of services and its impact on fund-raising. He said, "This is particularly important in respect of the T Olwen hospice as charitable contributions currently amount to £500,000 a year, about one third of the running costs."